The RBA threat is grave, and BN does not know it yet

“Yes, no matter how good a strategist you think you are, if your supporters do not think you can win, you won’t win. Even if your supporters believed in everything you said – and believe me, more and more Malaysians are waking up to the reality that Pakatan Harapan is full of lies – they may just not turn up at the voting booth thinking that you’re going to lose. And that’s what the whole RBA campaign is all about. Why the hell do you think Mahathir needed Lim Kit Siang on his side knowing that the Malays would get pissed off?”

THE THIRD FORCE

Artificial intelligence has gone the next level. Online, that is. Today, you have self-learning, self-evolving protocols that feed on billions upon billions of data bits per second to generate faces of people who don’t even exist. Some of the images generated are so convincing, we may be at the verge of a technology so advanced that it can create entire profiles of people out of thin air.

And I’m not kidding.

As we speak, there already are computer systems intelligent enough to develop innovative ideas and propositions merely by processing online data and learning from it. Some of these propositions have proven to be workable, while others have got scientists scratching their heads as they seem well before their time. And we’re just scratching the surface here on the kinds of breakthroughs that are happening today.

For instance, the guys at NVIDIA – which, if you don’t already know, is where many of your graphic cards and motherboards are coming from – have already developed self-evolving protocols capable of generating entire townships or even converting videos in real-time to depict stuff very different from those depicted in original clips. If you’re thinking that these systems require some form of human intervention, you’re dead wrong.

On the contrary, these systems ‘grow’ on their own by developing capabilities that transcend even the imaginations of persons who developed them. In other words, they develop into unique ‘characters’ just the way you and I do, which is what true artificial intelligence is all about. Like humans, these systems learn and evolve the same way a child develops skills by processing stimuli in his (or her) surroundings.

Now, think what would happen if we were to combine all this technology to create people profiles. You could end up with anything ranging from videos of people who do not exist to clips of them delivering speeches to fake audiences in fake settings. That’s just how crazy things can get, though your ability to grasp all of this depends on how privy you are to technological advancements. As we speak, there already are self-evolving protocols equipped with language developing and recognition capabilities.

So tell me, can you think of ways NASA, Pentagon or the various branches of the United States’ (US) broader intelligence community would want to put such technology to use? Think the blogging community, think online surveys and media polls. If history has taught us anything, it is that every technology ever invented right from the conception of the atomic bomb to the advent of online media has in one way or other fallen into their hands.

That includes the world-wide web (READ HERE) – ever since Tim Berners-Lee brought us the cyberspace platform along with the HTML, HTTP and the URL, the guys at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) began to exploit the technology along with the CIA and the FBI to conduct human profiling. They accomplished this by getting you guys hooked on to various online apps, chat platforms, forums and what have you.

Today, we have the social media.

The guys behind it learnt that humans were inclined to share anything and everything under the sun just so long as they did not need to physically communicate with the persons they were sharing it with. Not only did that expand surveillance capacities of intelligence organizations to limitless proportions, it generated an abundance of online data that included genuine opinions that the US administration obtained freely without even needing to conduct surveys or polls.

In other words, the intelligence community back in 2003 could tell you if George W Bush would defeat John Kerry in the run up to the US presidential elections with 99 percent surety. They accomplished this using smart systems that processed trillions upon trillions of data bits littered all over cyberspace by “online junkies.” These junkies unleashed into the world-wide web what came to be known as the “wisdom of crowds.”

But today, the systems the intelligence community is using are no longer smart – they’re artificially intelligent. To understand the difference, think of your Samsung mobile or the IPhone you just purchased as being smart. The system is smart simply because it enables you to connect with people in ways never before possible. But is it intelligent enough to learn, think and evolve the way a human does?

No.

Artificially intelligent systems, on the other hand, are. Not only do they exist, they think and learn exactly the way you and I do. These systems develop opinions of their own and are capable of developing fictitious characters from out of thin air. The ‘characters’ then go on to contribute to the “wisdom of crowds” by sharing their views and participating in opinion polls. Still, however intelligent or advanced these ‘characters’ are, they lack the ability to cast ballots during elections, which explains why the internet ‘crowd’ is no longer as ‘wise’ as it once used to be.

Thanks to these ‘characters’, the internet now has biases that are not necessarily reflective of election outcomes. For instance, if you have 100,000 of these ‘characters’ supporting a given party in surveys on a daily basis, you may be under the impression that the party has in its possession 200,000 confirmed votes, assuming, of course, that each ‘character’ influences one other in the course of time. But you know what?

That would be a false impression.

The reason being, not only are these characters non-voters, some of them have biases deliberately inserted into them by system developers to skew online surveys. As a result, you end up with hundreds of thousands of biased ‘characters’ who literally do not sleep and partake in hundreds of surveys at a time. These self-evolving ‘characters’ derive opinions of their own and will even condemn you for thinking differently.

Now, do you realise what this means?

It would be a bonanza for cyber troopers, whose jobs, among others, are to create as many fake profiles as possible to support or go against government. All one needs to do is tell the system the kind of bias he or she is looking for in a person and the number of personalities he or she needs. The system will then generate thousands upon thousands of profiles, each complete with a family background, work history, daily activity and what have you.

For instance, you may have a Mr. Chong Chee Wei from Kuala Lumpur who is against the leadership of Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak (which is the ‘bias’). Click on his profile, and you’ll discover that he opposes the Prime Minister’s pro-GST policies and supports his removal by “whatever means necessary.” Check on Chee Wei’s background, and you’ll see that he has a wife and some 200 friends, all of whom appear legitimate and even have backgrounds of their own.

Now, try tracing all these people, and you’ll realise that ‘Chee Wei’ belongs to a cluster that numbers some 10,000 people, many of whom do not exist. Yet, they’re extensively connected to online aps, community portals and group chats that discuss anything and everything ranging from Najib to Dr Mahathir Mohamad. All a developer needs to do is key in tolerances to the bias he (or she) expects from a cluster. For instance, if the cluster Chong Chee Wei has a 20% tolerance to accommodate Najib supporters, you will find that he has 2,000 friends who actually support the Prime Minister for some reason or other.

Get the idea?

If you do, you probably can already see the potential threat this brings to government. As much as we are aware that the DAP has a team of cyber troopers we refer to as the Red Bean Army (RBA), there is no denying that Lim Kit Siang has very powerful friends in the United States (US) who have access to artificially intelligent computer technology.

Seriously, it’s a fact.

For a fee, the senior Lim purchased the rights to a cluster of self-evolving and self-sustaining profiles with a bias “against Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak” in 2009 itself. The cluster learnt from ‘experience’ over the years and made legitimate friends within tolerances that were set into the system by Kit Siang’s cyber team. By the end of 2016, the senior Lim ended up with a cluster of around 7,000 Najib haters and 3,000 persons who supported the Prime Minister. Those who ‘hate’ the Prime Minister do so for a multitude of reasons – GST, 1MDB, EPF, you name it – all of which the system evaluated and decided on its own!

Yes, as the system evolves, it gets creative.

For instance, you could have a ‘guy’ named Raja Azwan who condemns Najib and even gives you a one paragraph statement of how GST forced his uncle to shut his business down. Click on the ‘uncle’s’ profile, and you will see a one paragraph statement condemning Najib for the exact same reason. Over the years, ‘people’ like ‘Raja Azwan’ have become so intelligent, they’re even capable of coming up with entire 1,000 word essays, all in flawless Malay and lines of reasoning.

You think I’m crazy?

Well, that’s your loss then. Seriously, why do you think the number of “faceless profiles” are getting lesser and lesser by the day? Apart from the 500 or so paid troopers – who are real people – and the 300 or so volunteers with multiple profiles that Kit Siang currently has, there exists an RBA group that controls an artificially intelligent system comprising almost 10,000 fake profiles. But they’re not just any profiles – they evolved over the years to extents that make it difficult for us to distinguish between them and real persons.

Today, they form the core of the nation’s online “wisdom pool” and have been indoctrinating the idea that a Pakatan Harapan victory is a foregone conclusion. This has been going on for almost a year, with the target audience being supporters of Barisan Nasional. Now, irrespective if the guys on top choose to believe me or otherwise, the opposition may just end up winning the 14th general election (GE14).

Yes, no matter how good a strategist you think you are, if your supporters do not think you can win, you won’t win. Even if your supporters believed in everything you said – and believe me, more and more Malaysians are waking up to the reality that Pakatan Harapan is full of lies – they may just not turn up at the voting booth thinking that you’re going to lose. And that’s what the whole RBA campaign is all about. Why the hell do you think Mahathir needed Lim Kit Siang on his side knowing that the Malays would get pissed off?

Please, wake up!

Due to your hyper-sensitive auras, Barisan Nasional is trapped in paradigms of conception and perception that shields it from truths and realities of the cyber world. On one hand, you have strategists who are overly cautious of opportunists who pretend to support the ruling coalition just to earn some big bucks. And that’s okay, believe me. But on the other hand, the cocoons these strategists have built around themselves are impeding progress and has them trapped under the shadows of their own egos.

Now, if you’re thinking all the above is bunkum, think again – just set up an IT intelligence team to probe whatever I’ve said. You don’t need to take my word for it at all. Get several IT professionals into the team, and bundle them along with one or two guys well versed with IT from Bukit Aman (the likes of Inspector Wong, assuming he’s still an Inspector or even around). Put one or two of your own guys into this team, but make sure you’re not leading it.

Once the team is up – and it shouldn’t take you more than a week to set it up – start brainstorming the way you imagine a “self-evolving program” would. Spend a week on this activity before developing a firm plan of action. Start digging the RBA like you’ve never dug before, and focus also on developing propagation tools to correct misconceptions among your own supporters. Remember, the notion that “it is pointless to convert the converted” no longer applies.

Do that, and you’re on your way to capturing a two-thirds majority.

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Note: When I wrote that the RBA was leaking plot-holes to Najib in a past article (see link below), I meant it – I was referring to the 500-odd hired troopers who are real people. In that sense, the RBA is quite stupid.

But in another sense, they’re getting more and more intelligent. That is if you consider the fake profiles developed by the Artificially Intelligent systems. The message the ‘owners’ of these profiles are spreading is that PH will win come what may. And they’re quite convincing.

So before anyone asks, this article does not contradict my previous article. No matter how convinced people are that PH is full of lies, they may end up believing that the opposition coalition will win. Out of frustration, they may stay at home on voting day.